Beside Him
by Abigail-Nicole
Summary: I hate it. I want to help him, I want to love him. I don't know how to be in love. So for now, I'll just stand beside him."


**Beside Him**  
by Abigail Nicole  
PG, Reloaded spoilers, Romance  
**Summary:**"I hate it. I want to help him, I want to love him. I don't know how to be in love. So for now, I'll just stand beside him."   
**Notes:** I built on her little: "Get up, Trinity, get up!" in the first Matrix, because it showed her own self-consciousness and being unsure of herself, so it's not uncanon. *sticks tongue out* 

I can't even define my emotions.

I look at him and I don't know what I feel. There is a great silence inside of me, and I don't know what it is. I know in my mind that I love him. I don't know how to love him.

Sometimes I look at him and it's like I'm looking at a stranger. I feel my heart give a tug and I don't know what to do--run up and kiss him or run away and hide. I don't know what he does to me. It's alien, not something I've felt in the real world. I look at him and I want to go over and hug him, take away all his problems, do anything to make him feel better and help him. He's got so much to do, and most of it I can't help with. 

It's so frustrating, watching him struggle through on his own. He doesn't know what he's trying to do or how to do it. I want to help him, make things all right for him, tell him what to do--but I don't know what to do, either. Destroying the Matrix has never been done before. He's so powerful there, and he knows everything about it, everything except what to do. 

I hate it. I want to help him, I want to love him. I don't know how to be in love. I want to be everything he wants me to be, but I can't and won't change, just for him. I'm Trinity, a warrior, an officer, a woman totally in charge of herself...who has no clue what to do about being in love. It turns me back into a thirteen year old, for Chrissake, afraid to talk artound him or even look at him. I don't want to love him, but I can't live without him. He's driving me insane. I don't want to be a lovesick puppy, but I don't know what to do. 

How do you act when you're in love, anyway? Do you hold hands and kiss and live together, screaming inside because you love him so much it hurts but you don't know if he loves you because you don't know how much he shares with you? Do you dare to tell him, or can you even find the words to express something that you _know_ in the depths of your soul? Where's the happy medium? When you feel like that person is the other half of your soul, when you know that without them you **could not** live anymore--what do you do? 

God, I sound like a pathetic teenager! Come on, Trinity. HOw hard can this love thing be, anyway? He'll be in my room tonight and...I will not go to my room tonight. I won't talk about this. No! I won't run away from him. Not when all I want to do is kiss him so hard he'll be begging for more. 

But I don't even know how I feel. When he's around me, there's an emptiness inside of me and I don't know what it is. Sadness? No, sadness is a hole ripping into my soul, sadness is Switch and Apoc and Mouse. Anger? Yes, damnit, because he turns me into a nervous, jealous teenager when he's around, but that's not his fault. 

What does emptiness inside mean, anyway? That I've become emotionally numb? No, you can't be emotionally numb when you're in love. Can you? Or was I emotionally numb before I fell in love and still haven't figured this whole emotion-thing out yet?

There's nothing wrong with me. I'm realatively happy. I mean, I like my job, and I look good in black leather. What more can a girl want? I'm even in love, with a guy who loves me as much as I love him. Which is scarily, frighteningly a lot, too much to be good for me. But I can't take a giant, complex empty feeling and snap a "This is Love!" label on it.

Because I'm a complex person, dammit! I'm allowed to have complex emotions. Like fearloveangerjealousy, like a great complete empty wholeness of fearangerlovejoysadnesshatesorrowdespair. But...it's not even that, not one of them or all of them. Is it? Why does he make me feel like this? Is this real love? I never felt like this before. But I've never felt love in the real world, either. Just simulated love.

Oh my God, what if I everything I think about love is just completely and totally wrong? What if my idea of love is still what the machines programmed into my head and real love is nothing like that? How do I know that I'm even in love with him? A machine doesn't even know what love feels like, they don't have emotions, how do they know that they programmed the emotions right in the Matrix? 

Breathe, Trinity. If I can't even trust myself to know when I'm in love then I might as well just tell him goodbye now. I have to love him. If this isn't love than I don't know what is. I'm losing it--he's the other part of my soul. I can't just decide that I don't love him! I love him. 

I don't know how to be in love.

So for now, I'll just stand beside him.


End file.
